US President Trump (Image Credit: AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump’s administration created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to settle claims that the Justice Department improperly targeted his political allies in exchange for the president’s voluntary dismissal of a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The agreement creates an “antiweaponization fund” that will pay legal claims to people who show they have suffered “weaponization” by the US government.The Justice Department said there is no partisan requirement to file the claim, but those words have often been used by Trump and his allies to describe the criminal cases against him, including those that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch said, “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and this Department intends to right the mistakes made before and ensure they never happen again.”Blanch, Trump’s former personal lawyer who defended him in three criminal cases, will appoint four of the five members of the commission that will decide the merits of the claims. Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization sued the IRS, arguing that the agency should have done more to prevent a former contractor from disclosing his tax returns to the media during the president’s first term.These returns revealed that Trump paid very little income tax over several years, the NYT reported in 2020. Trump filed the suit in his personal capacity, not as president.reuters